Love Hidden
by half-goddess-Katia
Summary: Love was a strange feeling and Ankh had trouble admitting how much he desired it.  Written 8/10


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Kamen Rider OOO, and I am making no money off of this. This is solely for my own and other's entertainment.

**AN:** I wrote this shortly after 45 aired, right after I saw the prompt so…at that time I was kind of hoping for a slightly different ending to OOO than the one I implied?

**Warnings:** No spoilers due to vague time placement (though possible accidental ending hint due to tone of story). Ankh/Eiji though (implied sex outside of fic)

_**Love Hidden**_

Love had always seemed like such a strange and, at times, bothersome thing to Ankh, and the red Greeed had never understood why so many humans coveted it, especially since there was no concrete way to define it.

Taking over a human body and interacting with them more certainly hadn't cleared up the matter any either. He was able to experience, second-hand, the familial love Hina felt for his host, and he felt the tender reactions from the dormant cop. He had, much against his will, been forced to listen to Chiyoko ramble on and on about how much he must've been denied love as a child – Eiji's cover story could really be a pain in the ass, even if it did afford him a decent nest. He heard human females twittering on and on about the subject, either going on about some inane fantasy or else complaining about the one they were "in love" with. The blonde had even watched several of them come in with a new mate every other time while claiming, each time, that they were in love with the current person. Ankh had also heard the whispers about he and Eiji, the speculations behind the fact that they shared a room and they were always disappearing at the same time.

Admittedly, they were sometimes mostly right. Usually, they were running off to battle a Yummy or a Greeed, but, once in a while when the mood struck, he would drag Eiji away for an entirely different purpose – namely pressing him up against the nearest flat surface and working out their frustrations, both sexual and otherwise, on each other. That didn't mean he was in love with the brunette nor that he wanted to be.

Love was not his greed – and he was a _Greeed_, a pile of medals, even if he was stuck using a human body – so he could not, _would_ not, desire or feel it. It didn't matter that the man he'd ended up working with and fighting beside was _the_ most selfless person he'd ever met – one who was willing to do anything it took to help other obtain happiness, including Ankh even if they fought over the method. It shouldn't matter that Eiji was so much more intelligent than he let on – wearing the fool's mask masterfully – and always seemed to know what Ankh was thinking and planning. It _couldn't_ matter that, over the course of their relationship, the looks the brunette gave him had changed – grown warmer somehow – nor could it matter that those looks, the unspoken but not unheard words, sent heat through his entire being, warming him in ways so much more substantial than the purely physical.

_ None_ of it could matter because, no matter how long he possessed the cop's body and no matter how _human_ he felt, he was a Greeed. In the end, Ankh knew things could never work out in the long term, even _if_ he had wanted it to. Eventually he and Eiji would reach a point where their goals no longer aligned, where the brunette would also realize that – no matter how human he may seem now – he was an embodiment of greed, the antithesis to everything the other male was and stood for. So it was better this way, to ignore the warmth and kindness, to minimize the connection so that when the day came it wouldn't be nearly as hard for either of them.

Love…love was such a troublesome feeling, far too complicated and convoluted in his opinion. Yet Ankh had no idea just how much he had desired it – no matter how much he would deny it aloud, no matter how much trouble he had even admitting it to himself – until it was already too late, until he'd already fallen for the one who understood him best.

All he could do now was ignore that one desire to minimize the hurt when the end eventually came…


End file.
